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TiPb Picks of the Week

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

Griffin announce the Helo TC iOS app controlled helicopter

Griffin is set to unleash a remote controlled helicopter called the Helo TC. The Helo TC will be controlled by an app which will be available for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. We have seen one of these before but where this helicopter differs to the already available Parrot AR Drone is in the price. The Helo TC will be available later this year for just £34.99 which is approximately $56.

To be fair, it is a totally different bit of technology compared to the Parrot AR Drone. The Helo TC is only suitable for indoor use, has a maximum flying time of just 8 minutes and has no on-board video capturing devices.

Daily Tip: How to download previously purchased apps, songs, and books in iTunes

Heard about Apple's iCloud beta and wondering how you can use it to download all your previously purchased apps, songs, and books in iTunes? Well you're in luck, because with iTunes 10.3, it's easy (although music is currently limited to US users only. Sigh.) Read on to find out how, after the break.

Cube Dog now talks back!

Cube Dogs are adorable, 3D, interactive pets that you can customize to your hearts content! When you talk they repeat what you say! Tap them, and they do all kinds of cool stuff... like play baseball, and even fend of ninja attacks! Take a snap shot, and share with your friends!

Talk Back - Your fully-customized and fully-awesome Cube Dog has a voice. Speak to it to hear him repeat what you say in a unique voice of your own.

Real-World Photos - By opening the iPhone’s rear-facing camera, Cube Dog can play and take photos alongside your real dog, at the beach, on your desk, or anywhere you choose.

Tap to Play - Cube Dogs respond when you poke them. Tap his hands, feet, head, and eyes to watch him wave, jump, dance, knock his head back or make crazy faces.

Will international app developers leave the US App Store over patent fears?

As expected Lodsys was but the first highly publicized patent troll to try its hand at getting licensing fees from small, independent iOS developers, and as more come creeping out of the woodwork, some international devs are considering leaving the US App Store to avoid the costs and potential legal nightmares.

Rate and track your favorite beers with Brewski Me

AppsVersusRobots have updated their beer tracking app, Brewski Me, with the ability to give half-star ratings and more awards.

Check into beers and locations

Discover and share new beers

See what your friends are drinking and meet other beer geeks

Rate and review beers

Create your beer Wish List

Stock your Beer Cellar and keep track of your Favorites

Earn Award Caps

The update includes:

The number one requested feature: half-star ratings! Dial in your brew reviews!

Bug fixes, including those with 24-hour format devices.

New background features to enable more awards!

My husband is a huge beer fan (and snob), so I look forward to using this to keep track of his favorites. Now I won't have to ruin the surprise of bringing beer home by calling to ask him which kind to get!

New and updated iPhone and iPad apps for Friday, July 15

Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

TUI Stopper: Do you have a habit of Texting-Under-The-Influence? Or maybe Calling-Under-The-Influence? This app allows you to hide some of your phonebook contacts for a given amount of time. [$0.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]

iPad at risk from over the shoulder password spies, new software can reveal all [video]

Your iPads’s secure passwords could be at risk from a new breed of thieves that peer over your shoulder as you enter passwords into your device. They could then steal your bank log in details, PayPal password or anything else that you have secured by a password.

The technique known as “Shoulder Surfing” could become a whole lot easier to carry out as demonstrated by a South African security research company. It has built an app that can decipher the key presses you make on your iPad. It works on a jailbroken iPhone, iPad or even on Mac OS. All you need to do is stealthily capture a video of a users key presses with your chosen device. The software can then get to work and reveal the password. In fact it gets even worse than that, the software can even be used with surveillance cameras or long distance lenses; making it even easier to capture the information without being spotted!

When a user types on an iPad’s touchscreen, each key glows blue for a fraction of a second after it’s struck, a helpful bit of feedback for any virtual keyboard. ShoulderPad’s image recognition algorithms, based on Open CV’s open source image recognition software, look for that flash of blue. “At any distance, if the blue is distinguishable, shoulderPad can detect that keystroke.

Of course software providers always protect a users password entry by showing asterisks on screen rather than the actual letters. If this sort of software gets in the wrong hands, that measure would not stop your passwords from being stolen and could open up a whole new phase of online crime! There is a short video demo after the break!

Apple Q3 2011 conference call set for Tuesday

Apple has announced their Q3 2011 conference call will take place Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 2:00 p.m. PDT/5:00 p.m. EDT. We'll get updated iPhone and iPad sales numbers, almost certainly, and it will be interesting to see if Apple gets asked any questions about the Lodsys lawsuits... the kind Google's Larry Page completely non-answered yesterday during the Google's results call.

As always, we'll cover highlights for you right here on TiPb. Anyone care to make any predictions?

A guitarist decided to video himself playing an acoustic guitar and, to be different, he stuck an iPhone 4 inside to capture the action from behind the strings. The results are really dramatic. The video has not been edited to emphasize the guitars oscillating strings; it is a natural occurrence with the iPhone 4 video camera. It is caused by the way the iPhone 4s rolling shutter works. Most consumer grade digital cameras do not take instant pictures; instead they scan the CMOS sensor diagonally from the top left to the bottom right. Fast moving objects create problems for this technique and produce these weird and wonderful distortion effects.

Take a look at the video after the break; it is definitely worth a few moments of your time!

The truth about jailbreaking and the jailbreak community

Lately we've been seeing a lot of rumors about iOS 5 and whether over-the-air updates will affect the ability to jailbreak. Regardless, I think there are some misconceptions about the Jailbreak community being spread around the blogsphere lately, even as link-bait or and well-intentioned rebuttals that take the bait and provide the links.

This isn't that. I'm not going to reward negative attention seeking. I'm just going to reiterate why I think jailbreak greatly benefits all iOS users, Jailbreak and otherwise, and trust people are smart enough and critical enough to read all the opinions and decide for themselves.